Fall 2013 syllabus
Fall 2013 ENG 101 Syllabus
WHO I AM: I'm John Goldfine, your EMCC writing instructor.
COURSE DESCRIPTION Boilerplate:
ENG 101 College Composition 3 Credits
Emphasizes rhetorical principles, accuracy of expression, organization, and longer essays in order to help students think logically and write clearly. In addition, students prepare a research paper and sit for a competency-based examination. A passing grade in this course or its equivalent is a graduation requirement of all degree candidates. (3 lec, 0 lab) Prerequisite: Appropriate scores on Accuplacer
COURSE OUTCOMES:
Students will demonstrate the ability to develop a thesis
· Students will write short essays with thesis statements
Students will be able to indicate to readers a developmental outline
· Students will have preview statements in their short essays
Students will show they are able to deploy a three point development in essays
· Students will write nine five-graf essays with three supporting grafs
Students will extrapolate from their own experience
· Students will mine their own experience and observations for specific support material in short grafs, prompts, freestyle writing, and technically correct five-graf essays
Students will use logic and analysis to solve problems
· Students will conduct research and write a technically correct research paper revolving around a question or questions or problem in their life
· Students will use various rhetorical techniques in five graf essays, each technique appropriate for the material chosen
· Students will select an appropriate method of rhetorical development to be used in writing a paper on a given topic in a competency final exam
HOUSEKEEPING:
CHANGES: Nothing in here is carved in stone. Changes happen—that’s the only thing I know in advance won’t change.
PHONE: I'm available for conversation on writing at 1 800 286 9357 x 4648 (work) and 338-3080 (home) (not after 9 pm or before 6 am, please.) If you don't reach me and want to leave a message, that's fine, but, unless you tell me it's an emergency, please DON'T leave your phone number and ask me to call you back--phone tag is a waste of everyone's time, and I won't want to return calls that aren't emergencies. EMAIL me instead, okay?
EMAIL: My email address is johngoldfine@gmail.com. No subject line should be used. If you use a subject line, your email may automatically be dumped in my junk box, along with the come-ons for cheap second mortgages, Vi*gra, spicy photos of two room-mates who just love to meet new guys, and really cheap printer cartridges.
* Please be sure to include your real name with any emails.
WEBSITE: There is a course website with links to everything you need this semester: handouts, lecturettes, assignments, writing samples, etc.
http://hoganroad.blogspot.com/
OFFICE HOURS: I can be reached by phone or email. I will be in or near my office (Room 155 Maine Hall) MWF, office hours on the door, unless my car breaks down or I have a meeting with my boss--that sort of thing. I’ll be glad to meet with you other times if needed. Let me know.
Online real-time chatroom conferences or skype converstations are also possible.
MATERIALS: No textbook. On the website http://hoganroad.blogspot.com/, there are many pages of assignments, sample work, examples, lectures and syllabus you can download onto memory stick or home computer. That’s your text. Free.
COMPUTERS: Get a memory stick aka flash drive aka thumb drive aka keychain trinket. Plan on forgetting and losing it at least once a semester. So, get two and then maybe also save on the school's server or in cyberspace, on email, and so on.
BEHAVING YOURSELF: You (online students) will be using blogger, aka blogspot, when you write. The school’s server is not involved, and you (everyone) can write anything you like, as long as you do your best to write it well and don’t violate any laws of libel, treason, obscenity, and so on. Generally, don’t write anything that would get you in trouble if the police happened to read it, but if your mom reads it and yells at you for not telling her you’re engaged or lost your job or you’re hungover, maybe it’s time she had a wake-up call anyway!
My only interest is helping you improve your writing, not taking charge of your opinions, morals, attitudes, or behavior. If you write about not washing the dishes for a week, I won’t nag you to clean up and I won’t tsk-tsk. I will work hard at making sure your writing details every greasy dish in the sink, squashed-out ciggie butt in your mother’s best coffee cup, and every cockroach that skitters under the fridge when the light goes on in the kitchen.
ANONYMITY: Online students can post stuff all semester under the name ‘Honeygoodstuff’ or ‘BoredwithFord’ or 'Barbieklone' or whatever handle you want (but only one handle per semester--if you choose one, you're stuck with it.) If you want to write about some cutie you know or some situation you screwed up, it might go easier and write better if you know you won’t be signing your name. And you can comment on other people’s stuff using that same handle.
The only thing is—and it’s a big thing—you won’t get credit for the course, not even a little, if I don’t know your handle! I mean, I can’t send the grade through as ‘Studmuffin Slickster gets an A.’
So, if you want, you can be anonymous to everyone but me, but if you’re flaming people behind your mask or using the anonymity to be a pain in the neck or, god forbid, harass someone, I’ll be on your case.
Of course, if you want to sign your name, that’s perfectly okay. I do that myself and find it makes me braver, not less so. You can certainly switch from Anonymous to a name at any time.
GRADES:
How you get your A:
* I-search paper: 30%, required
* Final: 10 %, required. Five graf essay, set topic, two hours. Pass/fail, all or nothing grade.
* 20 assigned paragraphs (aka 'grafs') 10 %%. Ungraded, though I may ask for rewrite
* 10 five-graf essays 50%. All are pass/fail, plenty of chance to turn the fail into a pass: 2 contrast, 1 classification, 1 division, 1 cause, 1 effect, 2 process, 2 example
Four of these ten essays will be done in class, must be done in class, and will not be accepted unless done in class. If you miss one of those inclass essays, there will be an end-of-semester day set aside for make-up, but you can only make up one (not more) of those missed essays. Online students will be doing these four at home, of course, but I'll try to make your home as in-classy as possible.
FIGURING OUT YOUR GRADE:
Each accepted graf is worth .5 % of your grade. Each accepted five-graf essay is worth 5% of your grade. Isearch is worth 30 of your grade. Final is worth 10% of your grade. ADD 'EM UP!!!
Five graf essays:Each five graf essay will be titled Essay # 1 (or 2 or whatever number it is.)
Each essay has a due date but I usually don’t play cop on these. Sometime during the semester, I may set a hard deadline and say that after this date, those assignments are closed—I won’t accept them any more. But I only do that rarely.
If you are missing a lot of essays or grafs or isearch work--one to two weeks' worth usually--I will send you a formal, written warning and then might drop you if you don't catch up within a week after the warning date.
If I warn you at some point and you catch up but then fall a week or more behind again, don't expect a second warning. I can and may drop you without further warning.
Short grafs: You will have 20 short grafs, with an optional 21st.
Each short assignment will be titled GRAF # 1 (or 2 or whatever graf number it is). Don't be imaginative with titles--use my titles--or despair.
Each graf has a due date but I usually don’t play cop on these. Sometime during the semester, I may set a hard deadline and say that after this date, those assignments are closed—I won’t accept them any more. But I only do that rarely. If you are missing a lot of grafs--two week's worth usually--, I might send you a formal warning and then might drop you if you don't catch up.
If I warn you at some point and you catch up but then fall a few weeks behind again, don't expect a second warning. I can and may drop you without further warning.
Isearch has a first draft due-date and a final draft due date that you have to heed--penalties for missing those dates.
Comments on classmate's posts: Online students: Feel free to read and comment on other people's writing, politely and tactfully. You can learn from other people's ideas! Not part of your grade though—
What I will do: I’ll read all your stuff, lecture, demonstrate, read aloud, answer any writing or course questions I can, discuss your writing with you.
Live students: I'll either attach a checklist to your papers and/or I will be prepared to discuss them with you in class. I might ask if I can read your writing aloud to point out good things in it to your classmates. (You can say no without ruffling my feathers.)
Online students: I’ll comment on everything you write on your blog. I read all writing at least three days a week--usually T, Th, and Sunday, so you won't have to wait very long for a reaction. I will turn every piece you give me around by the following class unless I am very sick, have serious personal things come up, and so on. In twenty-four years, I think the only time I failed to turn stuff around that quickly was when my mother died.
Every assignment you do this semester, except the isearch, is all or nothing. I either take it at full credit or kick it back until it’s ready to be accepted at full credit.
If you’re doing your assignments and I’m not saying, “This doesn’t work. I want you to try X,” you’re doing okay.
At the end of the semester, I check to see that you’ve done everything assigned. If you have, you get full credit for that portion of the course. If you haven’t, I pro-rate the percentages (If you missed half the assignments, you only get half the points—it ain’t rocket surgery!)
I add on the final 10% (if you pass it), and whatever number grade you earned on your isearch and come up with a total which I translate into a letter grade.
At no point during the semester, at no point until all the work is in, have I any idea what number grade goes with your name. Grades are important to you as a student, but the grade is not the only thing. It’s the byproduct of your writing, not the reason for taking the course. Grades interest you more than they interest me, if that isn’t too harsh a way of putting it, so be aware we may be working at cross-purposes sometimes.
I’m asked by the school to send out mid-semester warnings (just before mid-semester, actually). I do my best to try to figure out whether you’re in trouble by looking at the quality and quantity of your work, but every semester I get people who’ve done very little not very well who act surprised that they’re getting a warning. Sometimes I send out a performance warning instead of a toothless midsemester warning; the performance warning has teeth because it's the first step in the paper trail leading to dropping a student from the course.
At any time, if you really don’t know how you’re doing, ask, and I’ll be glad to talk to you about that, but I will not be able to give you a projected grade. Most of your teachers start you out at 100% and all semester you try to hang onto it, though every time you get an A minus, you're slipping a little. I start you out with a big fat zero--but each assignment builds toward that A you want. The only assignment that is not all-or-nothing is the isearch. Most students hate my system, whether because it's different or because it doesn't give them as easy an option as 'settling for a C,' I don't know.
At a certain point in the semester, I usually get a paranoid student or two who thinks I'm screwing them over and withholding from them grade information I have and they are entitled to know. I will try to calm those students down and talk to them about how they are doing, but--honestly now!--you know as well as I do how many assignments you've done, whether I accepted them, and so on.
ATTENDANCE: I want to see you in class, because I have things to talk to you about as a group and individually that are not online in any form. If you miss class, you miss hearing details about assignments, changes, my detailed reactions to what you’re writing, and so on. You miss learning and you miss teaching and you can get behind so fast, you can drown in your own regrets before you know it.
If you are taking the course online, feel free to attend class in your pajamas. But you still need to be doing assignments on a regular basis.
I'm interested in getting a steady supply of your writing to comment on and to teach you from. If the supply isn't steady, that's a problem. Truth is, bottom line: I can't teach you anything at all if you're not writing.
I don’t have an attendance policy--no set number of missed classes leading to certain consequences.
To repeat what I said above: no attendance policy but if you've missed an ungodly number of assignments--for good, bad, or no reason--I may send you a warning notice. (These go to your home address.) (I'd define 'ungodly' as being one to two weeks behind in any one (or more) of these areas: assigned paragraphs, isearch assignments, or long essays. If someone is constantly just under one to two weeks behind, they may still get a warning if, looking at their writing, I consider them sufficiently at risk.)
As well as the formal official notice, I will try to speak to you in class. Of course, if you are not coming to class, there's not much I can say to you! After I send the notice, if you don't catch up within a week, I may drop you without further notice.
If you catch up after a warning but then drop behind a week or more again, I may not send further warnings--might just drop you.
If you’re sick or for any reason can’t attend a particular class, you DON’T need to let me know.
DISABILITIES, HARASSMENT: The school’s policies outlined in the school catalog—policies on affirmative action, disabilities, sexual harassment, and grievance procedures—apply to this course.
If you have a documented disability, talk to the ADA coordinator, Elizabeth Worden, right away so we can plan reasonable accommodations.
The school’s EO/ADA policies are included at the end of this syllabus.
If you simply dislike something I say in the course of my teaching, conferencing, commenting, or lecturing but if what I've said does not seem like any sort of harassment, then you ought to discuss it with me first before going to Authority.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m a total dub when it comes to recordkeeping. I wish it were otherwise, but it isn’t and I’m not going to improve a whole lot at this point.
That means I'm going to make recordkeeping mistakes. When I make mistakes, I'll gladly eat them and correct my goofs and apologize, as long as you can document your side of the story. In other words, please hang onto your writing all semester and hang on to my replies, reactions, and writer’s checklists. Back stuff up!
If you need a teacher who is perfect and who has all the answers and is always right and who gives you that feeling of total security you haven't had since kindergarten, bail out now 'cause it ain't me.
WHY WHY WHY WHY????? This course probably will not be any direct, short-term help in your technology. But! It will offer you the beginning of those communication skills the employers all say they want. It will help you organize your thinking to make a better student out of you in all your classes. It will come in handy when you continue your education in future years because, one, you'll have it out of the way and, two, you will be sharper in other courses with this as a foundation. Other technologies and techniques come and go--reading and writing are NEVER going out of style.
People often don’t find out what they’re thinking until they try writing! It’s like exploration and discovery! The human mind is a funny thing. In a college level writing course, you might find yourself thinking about things in new ways. That’s also why you take the course.
This course is a standard and basic college-level composition course that hundreds and thousands of students from Ft. Kent to San Diego take every year and you may possibly be able to transfer the credit to other schools as you continue your education.
Further thoughts on Why: English is the Department of brooders. We brood over our existence, its purpose and meaning in the academic universe.
We are right to brood!
We know that a hundred years ago, colleges did not offer courses in literature, except literature in dead languages. Students who wanted to read
Keats or Shakespeare or Dickens did so on their own out of love, not for college
credit.
Nor did students of a century ago take courses in writing English. It was only after World War II, well within historical memory, that high school graduation
become a more or less universal expectation. High schools before the war only dealt with highly-motivated students preparing for college, students who entered
college already writing at what we today call college level.
We see this historical fact and doubt the foundation of our very existence.
Are we doing no more than teaching the high school courses of old?
And our brooding takes on even gloomier overtones when we talk to outsiders about what we do. Outsiders often imagine that we teach 'communications' and
that we spend a lot of time correcting spelling, pointing out misplaced modifiers, explaining that 'ain't' isn't a word, and generally acting like old-timey schoolmarms with pencils stuck in our flyaway buns.
And whatever lip-service outsiders pay to 'communications,' the truth is that most people hated English in school, hate to write, are embarrassed at their own
attempts, are convinced that they can't write, hate poetry, would not be caught dead reading Shakespeare or one of those boring old classics.
Most people really have no idea what English is all about.
So, yes, we brooders can have a hard time explaining our reason for being. The nursing department turns out nurses, welding turns out welders...but English?
Sometimes we hope to explain ourselves to outsiders by talking about critical thinking skills, focus and clarity of thought expressed in writing and speech,
and the ability to logically analyze and synthesize materials.
But that is just a shadow of the truth. The truth?
The truth is that the world is broken. Everyone with eyes to see knows this.
But every time a good sentence is spoken or written or a clear thought is
articulated, this broken world of ours begins to heal; light enters and darkness
recedes. And we in English are priests of the word.
So, nursing turns out nurses, welding turns out welders, and English turns out people able to see better and, by seeing better, people better able to make better
things to see.
WHEN YOU'LL DO IT: Stuff must be done regularly. Longer assignments may extend over a semester. Some things have heavy-duty, take-no-prisoner deadlines (I’ll give you advance warning in the assignment chart and in class.) Others have ‘suggested’ cream-puff deadlines. This course is like life in so many ways….
Writing improves with practice, lots of practice, lots and lots of practice. We have about forty-five classes and more than forty-five assignments! They’re not all the same size, but writing is due every day, unless you hear otherwise. That means lots of writing.
Some of it you can do in class. Some of it you will have to do out of class. You’re kidding yourself if you think you can do well in this class if you don’t write regularly—what happens is that you fall further and further behind and get depressed and stop coming to class which makes you fall even further behind.
SCHOOL AND JAIL: Some of you have come from a place where authority figures watch your every move. They check your name off to make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be every second of the day. They get angry if you wear forbidden clothes or carry contraband or eat certain foods at certain times and places. They are always on the lookout for drugs. They worry that you’re trying to manipulate the system, take over and run the place, form cliques. If they don’t like your attitude, they may write you up, put you in solitary, send you to Supermax, deny you privileges, threaten your future. And, of course, all this is being done to make you a better person.
After a few years of being treated this way, all you can think about is the day when you’re sprung and can hit the streets, free!
Prison? Nah, all too often that’s public high school I’ve just described. You’ll notice I said nothing about learning anything. Students and teachers are so busy hating each other, doing numbers on each other, hassling—they sometimes forget why they’re supposed to be there.
It can be comforting to be in prison instead of school because learning is hard and so is teaching. If you approach this class expecting that I’m going to hassle you about your appearance, your lateness or absences, your food and soda, your homework coming in late, and so on—you’re going to be disappointed. You may get mad at me for not providing you with the discipline you need. Tough! Provide your own! This ain’t high school!
The only thing I claim expertise in is writing. I can’t make you a better person. I’m not going to try. Naturally, I want you to be neat, clean, polite, punctual, organized, friendly, chem-free, hardworking, and cheerful. But the only thing I’m going to talk to you about is your writing.
When we get to the writing, I’ll have a lot to say.
THE WRITING FACTORY: If one thinks of an English course as a Writing Factory, it doesn't really matter much when material is comes in; after all, the teacher is the shop foreman and all he cares about is seeing that the production schedule is met. He checks off the assignments and lets the Big Boss know that all is chugging along well on the shop floor.
Many English courses are run that way. Essays have to be so many words long and have a certain look to pass quality control and that's that. You get your grade, punch the clock, and go home.
You must believe me when I tell you that my time as a steel fabricator on the shop floor at Lasko Industries in West Chester, Pennsylvania in the late sixties turned me off forever to factory work.
My job is not to ratify that certain assignments have been done. It is to help you improve your writing. You write, I read, I think, I react, you think, you react to my reaction, you rewrite--maybe we get somewhere.
So, when I assign you two intros on two different dates and an outro on a yet another date, it isn't because I have a big jones for intros and outros. It's because when I get an intro--long before the final essay--I can help with that long essay. There are pitfalls I can help you avoid. Ideas I can run by you. Mistakes you're not experienced enough to see yet. All from intro #1.
And when I assign a second one, it's so your mind will dance with the material a little, so you come it in several ways. I assign the outro out of order because the outro should depend on graf 1, not grafs 2-3-4. This is intensive for you and intensive for me, but I think it's a good way to teach and learn, and I don't mind the extra work.
But the assignments become a meaningless farce, when I see everything--intro 1, intro 2, outro, final draft, and metagraf--all handed in at the same time. What's the point? I can't use the intermediate assignments to teach anything, so why would I read them? I have to deal with a complete essay I haven't been able to offer any guidance on as it developed. It's harder for me to explain problems, and typically because it's 'finished' it's harder for you, the student to work with me anymore. Goldfine, a student might think, give me my flippin' C and call it good--I want to punch out and go home.
If I were a student and a teacher asked me to hand in a piece without offering a hand, I'd feel cheated. As it is, you're cheating yourself of the chance to learn and me the chance to teach. You may not, but I feel cheated.
If you give me nine things to look at it all at once, it's nine times more work for me than dealing with one thing, but it's exactly as useful to your learning as if you had given me one thing. One thing or nine--you still have to sleep on it and think about it.
So, please don't give me a bunch of saved-up assignments all at once. And, f'heavensake, don't tell me with a certain touch of pride, that you're a procrastinator.
WHY WRITING IS SUCH A PAIN: Writing improves over time with lots of practice, like any skill. For most of us it is a skill to be worked on, not some mysterious God-given talent. That means lots of blood, sweat, and tears.
I'm going to give you plenty of chance for all three by returning papers to you for more work if there are ways they can be improved. When they are ready, I'll take them at full credit. In other words, the short essays and paragraphs either get 100 % credit or none. 100 % means that I judge the paper to be competent--if you want a number value, I rate minimal competency at about a C + or 78. Your paper may be better, but once I've accepted it, I'm saying it's at least that good.
PLAGIARISM: This has become a real problem because of computers, thumbdrives, and the internet. Ideas belong to everyone. If you read an essay about hunting whitetails or dealing with snotty customers in retail and want to write your own essay on the same topic, that's fine.
But if you hand in someone else's essay (even if you make a few minor changes), you are cheating. I won’t accept the work. I won’t be happy. You won’t be either. You may get dropped from the course.
Work you've done for other courses or that you've written and sold to online suppliers of student papers can't be used in my course, unless you've checked with me first.
GETTING HELP: Please let me do my job and help you if you’re having big troubles—or little ones. Sometimes you have work a little to get my attention in class, but please don’t give up. There’s also help available in the Academic Support Center.
If you find yourself, late some night, up against a deadline, tired, out of ideas, desperate, panicky, and tempted to submit work that isn't yours--the thing to do is forget the deadline and get some sleep. In the morning, get in touch with me. I can cut you slack on deadlines, help you with ideas, and generally buck you up. This is my job. Let me do it!
CONFUSION: A certain amount of confusion always happens at the beginning of any course while you sort out what you need to do and not do--and so do I. Be prepared for that mentally, and don't let it steamroller you. I'm sympathetic and it will pass, I promise. We’ll all make mistakes until we find our groove—me as well as you. Be patient with my mistakes and I'll return the favor!
And help me do better by letting me know the good and bad stuff when I survey you! Or any time.
CELLPHONES: Check this out!
Writer's Checklist
"WRITING IS REWRITING"
Pass Not Ready
Comments:
___I don't want to grade this yet. Let's talk.
___Let's talk mechanics--they're all that are keeping this from passing.
___Major trouble in Paragraph 1 2 3 4 5. Let's discuss in detail.
___Why aren't you using the spell-check on the computer???!!!
___To improve this, try reading it aloud. Listen for places it doesn’t work or where the punctuation doesn’t match your reading.
___To improve this, write faster and take less care. Forget perfection and shoot for competence instead. Ready-Fire-Aim! The Perfect is the enemy of the Good.
___This is close, but no cigar. Rewrite won't be hard.
___I like this. Great details/well-organized/full of juice/ your voice is here/very individual/slick &smooth writing/interesting idea. Try tapping the same vein next time.
___Stuff I’ve highlighted I particularly liked.
___Can I have a copy of this for use with future classes as a good model?
___Funny kind of essay. It is what it is, and I can't see any way to improve it, though I might like to. I guess I better take it if I have no ideas to offer!
___You're not really in this--it isn't individual. So far, it’s generic and anyone could put their name to it. Individualize the material.
___Paragraph one has no hook, no mustard, no jazz, no juice, no zip, no TNT, no reason for a reader to read on.
___”I am going to write about the topic of X; let me explain to you about Y”—this way of writing is a major turnoff; don’t tell us, just do it
___Paragraph one has no plan of development, no direction, no bridge, doesn't move smoothly into paragraph two.
___Great topic, but no follow-through. Details are generic and blah. Why not brainstorm for real stories, examples, and specifics from your own life and experience?
___Material not pushed enough. You stop short of satisfying. You've made it easy on yourself but lost the reader. Kick it up another notch.
___Try creating a picture for the reader; right now, there’s no visual
___Very hard to individualize material about mass consumables—how many ways can you say you personally and individually like Coke?
___Nice outline--how about giving it some meat?
___Outro too weak to adequately close this essay. No kicker or topper or reversal or return. Outro has got to add value or why not stop at four?
___No point being made--why go through the motions when you've already forfeited the game before play starts?
___Humor is tough, but this made me laugh/smile/wince.
___Humor is tough because when the reader doesn't react, then the writer has nothing left to fall back on.
___Rough material is okay as long as shock value isn't a substitute for good writing. This is a short cut that doesn't go anywhere.
___Fiction/poetry/paranoid fantasy is a no-go.
___Not an order, but I'd abandon this if it were mine. Glad to help try to make it work, but it's gonna be an uphill struggle.
___Huh??? Confusion in _________________.
___All jumbled up--you've got to give it some structure. Readers are too lazy to do that for the writer.
___What kind of essay is this? Where are the keywords as signposts for the reader? Guideposts to paragraph topic? Frame around material? Topic sentences to lead into focused paragraphs?
___Yadda yadda. This rambles around and around...and then around some more.
___There's twice as many words here as you need to make your point. Cut, please—
___A bunch of stuff in here that doesn't really connect to everything else. Dump it.
___The dreaded comma splice, run-on, or fragment. Let's you and me get on it ASAP.
___Lots of little mechanical mistakes add up to a problem. Let's talk.
___Forget apostrophes/quotation marks for a while. Clear your system.
___Homonyms. Their are things we can due right know too correct you're problem.
___Who 'you'? Dump the yous and try 'I'. It's not as simple as just subbing the word and changing the verbs. You will write differently and better if you use I from the git-go because you will be picturing yourself in the scene.
___Why are you doing instructions—not an essay type you write in this course.
___Too talky in tone. Well, heck, this isn't a letter, know what I mean?
___Reads too mechanical—too much like insert tab A into slot B
___I don't know what to do with this. I'll pass it if you want me to (let me know), or go do some more work on it and then hand it back.
___I have no suggestions today. Please think about what I can do to help you improve your writing. Tell me your ideas.
___You're ready to move beyond the sandwich format essay. Next time out, let the material drive the organization. Knock your socks off!
___Forget if I'm happy--does this essay work for you?
___This essay redefines the boundaries and renders my puny checklist irrelevant.
___Comments on my comments? If so, tell me and let's discuss, okay?
___Not an order, but why not show this paper to_________________________? He/she might be interested or be able to learn something from your strengths.
___Could you read this aloud to the rest of the class (or let me) or let me so I can point out some of the good things in it?
I-search checklist*
Grade____/30
Late first draft: -2 =
Content /14
___This is a strong research topic
___You begin with strong questions
___You've laid out the background clearly and in detail
___Question really connects to you and your life
___You give clear reasons for writing and make the personal connection
___We find out how you found your answer.
___Answer laid out in detail
___We find out what you learned
___Your answer answers your question
___You tell us what difference the answer might make in the future, what you will do with it
___Research adequate
___Research goes beyond obvious
___Research emphasizes personal connection
___Overall, material is not just old-fashioned research
Organization /10
___Each section does what it's supposed to do
___Minimal overlap and repetition
___Sections subheaded, organized, not jumbled
___Answer organized by topic, not by when/where you found material
___Writinq doesn't ramble, get confusing, lose the point, become padded
___Search describes where information found and evaluates sources
__Abstract summarizes and is not an introduction
___You seem in control of your own material as shown by overall clearness, coherence , logic
Mechanics /2
problems major/minor
Layout
___title page ok /4
___table of contents ok
___abstract ok
___order of pages correct
___page numbering ok
___names of sections consistent and correct
___sections named
___margins ok
___double spaced
___citations ok
___list of sources Ok
___list of sources annotated
* The items on the checklist are not equally important and so one check or x does not necessarily equal another, which means that you can NOT add up checks or subtract x’s to figure the number I arrive at. I do the checklist and then determine a number based on all the elements I’m looking at.
Course assignments: ADA/EO BOILERPLATE:
NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATION
Eastern Maine Community College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age in its programs and activities. Inquiries about the College’s compliance with, and policies that prohibit discrimination on, these bases may be directed to: Affirmative Action Officer, President’s Office, Rangeley Hall, 354 Hogan Road, Bangor, Maine 04401, telephone number 974-4633, voice/TDD 974-4658, fax number 974-4888, nlundy@emcc.edu, http://www.emcc.edu;
United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 33 Arch Street, Suite 900, Boston, MA 02110, telephone 617-289-0111, TTY/TDD 617-289-0063, fax 617-289-0150, e-mail OCR.Boston@ed.gov internet http://.www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/index.html?src=oc;
Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC), 51 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333-0051, telephone 207-624-6050, TTY/TTD 207-624-6064, fax 207-624-6063, internet http://www.state.me.us/mhrc/index.
shtml: and/or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 475 Govern-ment Center, Boston, MA 02203, telephone 617-565-3200 or 1-800-669-4000, TTY 617-565-3204 or 1-800-669-6820, fax 617-565-3196, internet http://www.eeoc.gov/.
The College also does not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference or marital, parental, or veteran’s status. Inquiries about the College’s policies that prohibit discrimination on these bases may be directed to the Affirmative Action Officer or MHRC identified above.
Eastern Maine Community College is an equal opportunity institution and complies with the requirements of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 (34 CFR Part 106), Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (34 CFR Part 104), and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and its implementing regulations. Discrimination on the basis of race; color; national origin; gender; sexual orientation, marital, parental or military status or disability in the recruitment and admission of its students, in the administration of its educational policies and programs, and in the recruitment and employment of its instructional and non-instruction personnel is prohibited. Sexual harassment of either employees or students is a violation of state and federal laws. It is the policy of Eastern Maine Community College that no member of the College community may sexually harass another. Inquiries concerning Title IX, Title VI and ADA may be made to Affirmative Action Officer, at Eastern Maine Community College, 354 Hogan Road, Bangor, Maine 04401, (207) 974-4633; inquiries regarding Disability Services may be made to the Section 504 Coordinator at the same address, (207) 974-4658 (voice/TDD). Questions, concerns, complaints and/or grievances about discrimination in any areas of the college should be directed to Eastern Maine Community College’s Affirmative Action Officer; or to the Maine Human Rights Commission, State House Station 51, Augusta, Maine, 04333-0051, (207) 624-6050 or the Office of Civil Rights, J.W. McCormack, POCH, Room 707, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, 1-617-223-9662.
MORE LEGAL BOILERPLATE, Aug. 6, 2013:
WHO I AM: I'm John Goldfine, your EMCC writing instructor.
COURSE DESCRIPTION Boilerplate:
ENG 101 College Composition 3 Credits
Emphasizes rhetorical principles, accuracy of expression, organization, and longer essays in order to help students think logically and write clearly. In addition, students prepare a research paper and sit for a competency-based examination. A passing grade in this course or its equivalent is a graduation requirement of all degree candidates. (3 lec, 0 lab) Prerequisite: Appropriate scores on Accuplacer
COURSE OUTCOMES:
Students will demonstrate the ability to develop a thesis
· Students will write short essays with thesis statements
Students will be able to indicate to readers a developmental outline
· Students will have preview statements in their short essays
Students will show they are able to deploy a three point development in essays
· Students will write nine five-graf essays with three supporting grafs
Students will extrapolate from their own experience
· Students will mine their own experience and observations for specific support material in short grafs, prompts, freestyle writing, and technically correct five-graf essays
Students will use logic and analysis to solve problems
· Students will conduct research and write a technically correct research paper revolving around a question or questions or problem in their life
· Students will use various rhetorical techniques in five graf essays, each technique appropriate for the material chosen
· Students will select an appropriate method of rhetorical development to be used in writing a paper on a given topic in a competency final exam
HOUSEKEEPING:
CHANGES: Nothing in here is carved in stone. Changes happen—that’s the only thing I know in advance won’t change.
PHONE: I'm available for conversation on writing at 1 800 286 9357 x 4648 (work) and 338-3080 (home) (not after 9 pm or before 6 am, please.) If you don't reach me and want to leave a message, that's fine, but, unless you tell me it's an emergency, please DON'T leave your phone number and ask me to call you back--phone tag is a waste of everyone's time, and I won't want to return calls that aren't emergencies. EMAIL me instead, okay?
EMAIL: My email address is johngoldfine@gmail.com. No subject line should be used. If you use a subject line, your email may automatically be dumped in my junk box, along with the come-ons for cheap second mortgages, Vi*gra, spicy photos of two room-mates who just love to meet new guys, and really cheap printer cartridges.
* Please be sure to include your real name with any emails.
WEBSITE: There is a course website with links to everything you need this semester: handouts, lecturettes, assignments, writing samples, etc.
http://hoganroad.blogspot.com/
OFFICE HOURS: I can be reached by phone or email. I will be in or near my office (Room 155 Maine Hall) MWF, office hours on the door, unless my car breaks down or I have a meeting with my boss--that sort of thing. I’ll be glad to meet with you other times if needed. Let me know.
Online real-time chatroom conferences or skype converstations are also possible.
MATERIALS: No textbook. On the website http://hoganroad.blogspot.com/, there are many pages of assignments, sample work, examples, lectures and syllabus you can download onto memory stick or home computer. That’s your text. Free.
COMPUTERS: Get a memory stick aka flash drive aka thumb drive aka keychain trinket. Plan on forgetting and losing it at least once a semester. So, get two and then maybe also save on the school's server or in cyberspace, on email, and so on.
BEHAVING YOURSELF: You (online students) will be using blogger, aka blogspot, when you write. The school’s server is not involved, and you (everyone) can write anything you like, as long as you do your best to write it well and don’t violate any laws of libel, treason, obscenity, and so on. Generally, don’t write anything that would get you in trouble if the police happened to read it, but if your mom reads it and yells at you for not telling her you’re engaged or lost your job or you’re hungover, maybe it’s time she had a wake-up call anyway!
My only interest is helping you improve your writing, not taking charge of your opinions, morals, attitudes, or behavior. If you write about not washing the dishes for a week, I won’t nag you to clean up and I won’t tsk-tsk. I will work hard at making sure your writing details every greasy dish in the sink, squashed-out ciggie butt in your mother’s best coffee cup, and every cockroach that skitters under the fridge when the light goes on in the kitchen.
ANONYMITY: Online students can post stuff all semester under the name ‘Honeygoodstuff’ or ‘BoredwithFord’ or 'Barbieklone' or whatever handle you want (but only one handle per semester--if you choose one, you're stuck with it.) If you want to write about some cutie you know or some situation you screwed up, it might go easier and write better if you know you won’t be signing your name. And you can comment on other people’s stuff using that same handle.
The only thing is—and it’s a big thing—you won’t get credit for the course, not even a little, if I don’t know your handle! I mean, I can’t send the grade through as ‘Studmuffin Slickster gets an A.’
So, if you want, you can be anonymous to everyone but me, but if you’re flaming people behind your mask or using the anonymity to be a pain in the neck or, god forbid, harass someone, I’ll be on your case.
Of course, if you want to sign your name, that’s perfectly okay. I do that myself and find it makes me braver, not less so. You can certainly switch from Anonymous to a name at any time.
GRADES:
How you get your A:
* I-search paper: 30%, required
* Final: 10 %, required. Five graf essay, set topic, two hours. Pass/fail, all or nothing grade.
* 20 assigned paragraphs (aka 'grafs') 10 %%. Ungraded, though I may ask for rewrite
* 10 five-graf essays 50%. All are pass/fail, plenty of chance to turn the fail into a pass: 2 contrast, 1 classification, 1 division, 1 cause, 1 effect, 2 process, 2 example
Four of these ten essays will be done in class, must be done in class, and will not be accepted unless done in class. If you miss one of those inclass essays, there will be an end-of-semester day set aside for make-up, but you can only make up one (not more) of those missed essays. Online students will be doing these four at home, of course, but I'll try to make your home as in-classy as possible.
FIGURING OUT YOUR GRADE:
Each accepted graf is worth .5 % of your grade. Each accepted five-graf essay is worth 5% of your grade. Isearch is worth 30 of your grade. Final is worth 10% of your grade. ADD 'EM UP!!!
Five graf essays:Each five graf essay will be titled Essay # 1 (or 2 or whatever number it is.)
Each essay has a due date but I usually don’t play cop on these. Sometime during the semester, I may set a hard deadline and say that after this date, those assignments are closed—I won’t accept them any more. But I only do that rarely.
If you are missing a lot of essays or grafs or isearch work--one to two weeks' worth usually--I will send you a formal, written warning and then might drop you if you don't catch up within a week after the warning date.
If I warn you at some point and you catch up but then fall a week or more behind again, don't expect a second warning. I can and may drop you without further warning.
Short grafs: You will have 20 short grafs, with an optional 21st.
Each short assignment will be titled GRAF # 1 (or 2 or whatever graf number it is). Don't be imaginative with titles--use my titles--or despair.
Each graf has a due date but I usually don’t play cop on these. Sometime during the semester, I may set a hard deadline and say that after this date, those assignments are closed—I won’t accept them any more. But I only do that rarely. If you are missing a lot of grafs--two week's worth usually--, I might send you a formal warning and then might drop you if you don't catch up.
If I warn you at some point and you catch up but then fall a few weeks behind again, don't expect a second warning. I can and may drop you without further warning.
Isearch has a first draft due-date and a final draft due date that you have to heed--penalties for missing those dates.
Comments on classmate's posts: Online students: Feel free to read and comment on other people's writing, politely and tactfully. You can learn from other people's ideas! Not part of your grade though—
What I will do: I’ll read all your stuff, lecture, demonstrate, read aloud, answer any writing or course questions I can, discuss your writing with you.
Live students: I'll either attach a checklist to your papers and/or I will be prepared to discuss them with you in class. I might ask if I can read your writing aloud to point out good things in it to your classmates. (You can say no without ruffling my feathers.)
Online students: I’ll comment on everything you write on your blog. I read all writing at least three days a week--usually T, Th, and Sunday, so you won't have to wait very long for a reaction. I will turn every piece you give me around by the following class unless I am very sick, have serious personal things come up, and so on. In twenty-four years, I think the only time I failed to turn stuff around that quickly was when my mother died.
Every assignment you do this semester, except the isearch, is all or nothing. I either take it at full credit or kick it back until it’s ready to be accepted at full credit.
If you’re doing your assignments and I’m not saying, “This doesn’t work. I want you to try X,” you’re doing okay.
At the end of the semester, I check to see that you’ve done everything assigned. If you have, you get full credit for that portion of the course. If you haven’t, I pro-rate the percentages (If you missed half the assignments, you only get half the points—it ain’t rocket surgery!)
I add on the final 10% (if you pass it), and whatever number grade you earned on your isearch and come up with a total which I translate into a letter grade.
At no point during the semester, at no point until all the work is in, have I any idea what number grade goes with your name. Grades are important to you as a student, but the grade is not the only thing. It’s the byproduct of your writing, not the reason for taking the course. Grades interest you more than they interest me, if that isn’t too harsh a way of putting it, so be aware we may be working at cross-purposes sometimes.
I’m asked by the school to send out mid-semester warnings (just before mid-semester, actually). I do my best to try to figure out whether you’re in trouble by looking at the quality and quantity of your work, but every semester I get people who’ve done very little not very well who act surprised that they’re getting a warning. Sometimes I send out a performance warning instead of a toothless midsemester warning; the performance warning has teeth because it's the first step in the paper trail leading to dropping a student from the course.
At any time, if you really don’t know how you’re doing, ask, and I’ll be glad to talk to you about that, but I will not be able to give you a projected grade. Most of your teachers start you out at 100% and all semester you try to hang onto it, though every time you get an A minus, you're slipping a little. I start you out with a big fat zero--but each assignment builds toward that A you want. The only assignment that is not all-or-nothing is the isearch. Most students hate my system, whether because it's different or because it doesn't give them as easy an option as 'settling for a C,' I don't know.
At a certain point in the semester, I usually get a paranoid student or two who thinks I'm screwing them over and withholding from them grade information I have and they are entitled to know. I will try to calm those students down and talk to them about how they are doing, but--honestly now!--you know as well as I do how many assignments you've done, whether I accepted them, and so on.
ATTENDANCE: I want to see you in class, because I have things to talk to you about as a group and individually that are not online in any form. If you miss class, you miss hearing details about assignments, changes, my detailed reactions to what you’re writing, and so on. You miss learning and you miss teaching and you can get behind so fast, you can drown in your own regrets before you know it.
If you are taking the course online, feel free to attend class in your pajamas. But you still need to be doing assignments on a regular basis.
I'm interested in getting a steady supply of your writing to comment on and to teach you from. If the supply isn't steady, that's a problem. Truth is, bottom line: I can't teach you anything at all if you're not writing.
I don’t have an attendance policy--no set number of missed classes leading to certain consequences.
To repeat what I said above: no attendance policy but if you've missed an ungodly number of assignments--for good, bad, or no reason--I may send you a warning notice. (These go to your home address.) (I'd define 'ungodly' as being one to two weeks behind in any one (or more) of these areas: assigned paragraphs, isearch assignments, or long essays. If someone is constantly just under one to two weeks behind, they may still get a warning if, looking at their writing, I consider them sufficiently at risk.)
As well as the formal official notice, I will try to speak to you in class. Of course, if you are not coming to class, there's not much I can say to you! After I send the notice, if you don't catch up within a week, I may drop you without further notice.
For some weird reason I cannot begin to fathom,
sometimes students think I don't care when assignments come in, that I'm a
'cool' teacher. Forget it! I am not! I do care! And
I'm not cool at all. What I don't care to do and won't do is nag or play
cop. Get stuff in or prepare for an official warning, but, please,
f'heavensake, don't get mad and tell me later I misled you into thinking the
course was anything-goes.
If you catch up after a warning but then drop behind a week or more again, I may not send further warnings--might just drop you.
If you’re sick or for any reason can’t attend a particular class, you DON’T need to let me know.
DISABILITIES, HARASSMENT: The school’s policies outlined in the school catalog—policies on affirmative action, disabilities, sexual harassment, and grievance procedures—apply to this course.
If you have a documented disability, talk to the ADA coordinator, Elizabeth Worden, right away so we can plan reasonable accommodations.
The school’s EO/ADA policies are included at the end of this syllabus.
If you simply dislike something I say in the course of my teaching, conferencing, commenting, or lecturing but if what I've said does not seem like any sort of harassment, then you ought to discuss it with me first before going to Authority.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m a total dub when it comes to recordkeeping. I wish it were otherwise, but it isn’t and I’m not going to improve a whole lot at this point.
That means I'm going to make recordkeeping mistakes. When I make mistakes, I'll gladly eat them and correct my goofs and apologize, as long as you can document your side of the story. In other words, please hang onto your writing all semester and hang on to my replies, reactions, and writer’s checklists. Back stuff up!
If you need a teacher who is perfect and who has all the answers and is always right and who gives you that feeling of total security you haven't had since kindergarten, bail out now 'cause it ain't me.
WHY WHY WHY WHY????? This course probably will not be any direct, short-term help in your technology. But! It will offer you the beginning of those communication skills the employers all say they want. It will help you organize your thinking to make a better student out of you in all your classes. It will come in handy when you continue your education in future years because, one, you'll have it out of the way and, two, you will be sharper in other courses with this as a foundation. Other technologies and techniques come and go--reading and writing are NEVER going out of style.
People often don’t find out what they’re thinking until they try writing! It’s like exploration and discovery! The human mind is a funny thing. In a college level writing course, you might find yourself thinking about things in new ways. That’s also why you take the course.
This course is a standard and basic college-level composition course that hundreds and thousands of students from Ft. Kent to San Diego take every year and you may possibly be able to transfer the credit to other schools as you continue your education.
Further thoughts on Why: English is the Department of brooders. We brood over our existence, its purpose and meaning in the academic universe.
We are right to brood!
We know that a hundred years ago, colleges did not offer courses in literature, except literature in dead languages. Students who wanted to read
Keats or Shakespeare or Dickens did so on their own out of love, not for college
credit.
Nor did students of a century ago take courses in writing English. It was only after World War II, well within historical memory, that high school graduation
become a more or less universal expectation. High schools before the war only dealt with highly-motivated students preparing for college, students who entered
college already writing at what we today call college level.
We see this historical fact and doubt the foundation of our very existence.
Are we doing no more than teaching the high school courses of old?
And our brooding takes on even gloomier overtones when we talk to outsiders about what we do. Outsiders often imagine that we teach 'communications' and
that we spend a lot of time correcting spelling, pointing out misplaced modifiers, explaining that 'ain't' isn't a word, and generally acting like old-timey schoolmarms with pencils stuck in our flyaway buns.
And whatever lip-service outsiders pay to 'communications,' the truth is that most people hated English in school, hate to write, are embarrassed at their own
attempts, are convinced that they can't write, hate poetry, would not be caught dead reading Shakespeare or one of those boring old classics.
Most people really have no idea what English is all about.
So, yes, we brooders can have a hard time explaining our reason for being. The nursing department turns out nurses, welding turns out welders...but English?
Sometimes we hope to explain ourselves to outsiders by talking about critical thinking skills, focus and clarity of thought expressed in writing and speech,
and the ability to logically analyze and synthesize materials.
But that is just a shadow of the truth. The truth?
The truth is that the world is broken. Everyone with eyes to see knows this.
But every time a good sentence is spoken or written or a clear thought is
articulated, this broken world of ours begins to heal; light enters and darkness
recedes. And we in English are priests of the word.
So, nursing turns out nurses, welding turns out welders, and English turns out people able to see better and, by seeing better, people better able to make better
things to see.
WHEN YOU'LL DO IT: Stuff must be done regularly. Longer assignments may extend over a semester. Some things have heavy-duty, take-no-prisoner deadlines (I’ll give you advance warning in the assignment chart and in class.) Others have ‘suggested’ cream-puff deadlines. This course is like life in so many ways….
Writing improves with practice, lots of practice, lots and lots of practice. We have about forty-five classes and more than forty-five assignments! They’re not all the same size, but writing is due every day, unless you hear otherwise. That means lots of writing.
Some of it you can do in class. Some of it you will have to do out of class. You’re kidding yourself if you think you can do well in this class if you don’t write regularly—what happens is that you fall further and further behind and get depressed and stop coming to class which makes you fall even further behind.
SCHOOL AND JAIL: Some of you have come from a place where authority figures watch your every move. They check your name off to make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be every second of the day. They get angry if you wear forbidden clothes or carry contraband or eat certain foods at certain times and places. They are always on the lookout for drugs. They worry that you’re trying to manipulate the system, take over and run the place, form cliques. If they don’t like your attitude, they may write you up, put you in solitary, send you to Supermax, deny you privileges, threaten your future. And, of course, all this is being done to make you a better person.
After a few years of being treated this way, all you can think about is the day when you’re sprung and can hit the streets, free!
Prison? Nah, all too often that’s public high school I’ve just described. You’ll notice I said nothing about learning anything. Students and teachers are so busy hating each other, doing numbers on each other, hassling—they sometimes forget why they’re supposed to be there.
It can be comforting to be in prison instead of school because learning is hard and so is teaching. If you approach this class expecting that I’m going to hassle you about your appearance, your lateness or absences, your food and soda, your homework coming in late, and so on—you’re going to be disappointed. You may get mad at me for not providing you with the discipline you need. Tough! Provide your own! This ain’t high school!
The only thing I claim expertise in is writing. I can’t make you a better person. I’m not going to try. Naturally, I want you to be neat, clean, polite, punctual, organized, friendly, chem-free, hardworking, and cheerful. But the only thing I’m going to talk to you about is your writing.
When we get to the writing, I’ll have a lot to say.
THE WRITING FACTORY: If one thinks of an English course as a Writing Factory, it doesn't really matter much when material is comes in; after all, the teacher is the shop foreman and all he cares about is seeing that the production schedule is met. He checks off the assignments and lets the Big Boss know that all is chugging along well on the shop floor.
Many English courses are run that way. Essays have to be so many words long and have a certain look to pass quality control and that's that. You get your grade, punch the clock, and go home.
You must believe me when I tell you that my time as a steel fabricator on the shop floor at Lasko Industries in West Chester, Pennsylvania in the late sixties turned me off forever to factory work.
My job is not to ratify that certain assignments have been done. It is to help you improve your writing. You write, I read, I think, I react, you think, you react to my reaction, you rewrite--maybe we get somewhere.
So, when I assign you two intros on two different dates and an outro on a yet another date, it isn't because I have a big jones for intros and outros. It's because when I get an intro--long before the final essay--I can help with that long essay. There are pitfalls I can help you avoid. Ideas I can run by you. Mistakes you're not experienced enough to see yet. All from intro #1.
And when I assign a second one, it's so your mind will dance with the material a little, so you come it in several ways. I assign the outro out of order because the outro should depend on graf 1, not grafs 2-3-4. This is intensive for you and intensive for me, but I think it's a good way to teach and learn, and I don't mind the extra work.
But the assignments become a meaningless farce, when I see everything--intro 1, intro 2, outro, final draft, and metagraf--all handed in at the same time. What's the point? I can't use the intermediate assignments to teach anything, so why would I read them? I have to deal with a complete essay I haven't been able to offer any guidance on as it developed. It's harder for me to explain problems, and typically because it's 'finished' it's harder for you, the student to work with me anymore. Goldfine, a student might think, give me my flippin' C and call it good--I want to punch out and go home.
If I were a student and a teacher asked me to hand in a piece without offering a hand, I'd feel cheated. As it is, you're cheating yourself of the chance to learn and me the chance to teach. You may not, but I feel cheated.
If you give me nine things to look at it all at once, it's nine times more work for me than dealing with one thing, but it's exactly as useful to your learning as if you had given me one thing. One thing or nine--you still have to sleep on it and think about it.
So, please don't give me a bunch of saved-up assignments all at once. And, f'heavensake, don't tell me with a certain touch of pride, that you're a procrastinator.
WHY WRITING IS SUCH A PAIN: Writing improves over time with lots of practice, like any skill. For most of us it is a skill to be worked on, not some mysterious God-given talent. That means lots of blood, sweat, and tears.
I'm going to give you plenty of chance for all three by returning papers to you for more work if there are ways they can be improved. When they are ready, I'll take them at full credit. In other words, the short essays and paragraphs either get 100 % credit or none. 100 % means that I judge the paper to be competent--if you want a number value, I rate minimal competency at about a C + or 78. Your paper may be better, but once I've accepted it, I'm saying it's at least that good.
PLAGIARISM: This has become a real problem because of computers, thumbdrives, and the internet. Ideas belong to everyone. If you read an essay about hunting whitetails or dealing with snotty customers in retail and want to write your own essay on the same topic, that's fine.
But if you hand in someone else's essay (even if you make a few minor changes), you are cheating. I won’t accept the work. I won’t be happy. You won’t be either. You may get dropped from the course.
Work you've done for other courses or that you've written and sold to online suppliers of student papers can't be used in my course, unless you've checked with me first.
GETTING HELP: Please let me do my job and help you if you’re having big troubles—or little ones. Sometimes you have work a little to get my attention in class, but please don’t give up. There’s also help available in the Academic Support Center.
If you find yourself, late some night, up against a deadline, tired, out of ideas, desperate, panicky, and tempted to submit work that isn't yours--the thing to do is forget the deadline and get some sleep. In the morning, get in touch with me. I can cut you slack on deadlines, help you with ideas, and generally buck you up. This is my job. Let me do it!
CONFUSION: A certain amount of confusion always happens at the beginning of any course while you sort out what you need to do and not do--and so do I. Be prepared for that mentally, and don't let it steamroller you. I'm sympathetic and it will pass, I promise. We’ll all make mistakes until we find our groove—me as well as you. Be patient with my mistakes and I'll return the favor!
And help me do better by letting me know the good and bad stuff when I survey you! Or any time.
CELLPHONES: Check this out!
Writer's Checklist
"WRITING IS REWRITING"
Pass Not Ready
Comments:
___I don't want to grade this yet. Let's talk.
___Let's talk mechanics--they're all that are keeping this from passing.
___Major trouble in Paragraph 1 2 3 4 5. Let's discuss in detail.
___Why aren't you using the spell-check on the computer???!!!
___To improve this, try reading it aloud. Listen for places it doesn’t work or where the punctuation doesn’t match your reading.
___To improve this, write faster and take less care. Forget perfection and shoot for competence instead. Ready-Fire-Aim! The Perfect is the enemy of the Good.
___This is close, but no cigar. Rewrite won't be hard.
___I like this. Great details/well-organized/full of juice/ your voice is here/very individual/slick &smooth writing/interesting idea. Try tapping the same vein next time.
___Stuff I’ve highlighted I particularly liked.
___Can I have a copy of this for use with future classes as a good model?
___Funny kind of essay. It is what it is, and I can't see any way to improve it, though I might like to. I guess I better take it if I have no ideas to offer!
___You're not really in this--it isn't individual. So far, it’s generic and anyone could put their name to it. Individualize the material.
___Paragraph one has no hook, no mustard, no jazz, no juice, no zip, no TNT, no reason for a reader to read on.
___”I am going to write about the topic of X; let me explain to you about Y”—this way of writing is a major turnoff; don’t tell us, just do it
___Paragraph one has no plan of development, no direction, no bridge, doesn't move smoothly into paragraph two.
___Great topic, but no follow-through. Details are generic and blah. Why not brainstorm for real stories, examples, and specifics from your own life and experience?
___Material not pushed enough. You stop short of satisfying. You've made it easy on yourself but lost the reader. Kick it up another notch.
___Try creating a picture for the reader; right now, there’s no visual
___Very hard to individualize material about mass consumables—how many ways can you say you personally and individually like Coke?
___Nice outline--how about giving it some meat?
___Outro too weak to adequately close this essay. No kicker or topper or reversal or return. Outro has got to add value or why not stop at four?
___No point being made--why go through the motions when you've already forfeited the game before play starts?
___Humor is tough, but this made me laugh/smile/wince.
___Humor is tough because when the reader doesn't react, then the writer has nothing left to fall back on.
___Rough material is okay as long as shock value isn't a substitute for good writing. This is a short cut that doesn't go anywhere.
___Fiction/poetry/paranoid fantasy is a no-go.
___Not an order, but I'd abandon this if it were mine. Glad to help try to make it work, but it's gonna be an uphill struggle.
___Huh??? Confusion in _________________.
___All jumbled up--you've got to give it some structure. Readers are too lazy to do that for the writer.
___What kind of essay is this? Where are the keywords as signposts for the reader? Guideposts to paragraph topic? Frame around material? Topic sentences to lead into focused paragraphs?
___Yadda yadda. This rambles around and around...and then around some more.
___There's twice as many words here as you need to make your point. Cut, please—
___A bunch of stuff in here that doesn't really connect to everything else. Dump it.
___The dreaded comma splice, run-on, or fragment. Let's you and me get on it ASAP.
___Lots of little mechanical mistakes add up to a problem. Let's talk.
___Forget apostrophes/quotation marks for a while. Clear your system.
___Homonyms. Their are things we can due right know too correct you're problem.
___Who 'you'? Dump the yous and try 'I'. It's not as simple as just subbing the word and changing the verbs. You will write differently and better if you use I from the git-go because you will be picturing yourself in the scene.
___Why are you doing instructions—not an essay type you write in this course.
___Too talky in tone. Well, heck, this isn't a letter, know what I mean?
___Reads too mechanical—too much like insert tab A into slot B
___I don't know what to do with this. I'll pass it if you want me to (let me know), or go do some more work on it and then hand it back.
___I have no suggestions today. Please think about what I can do to help you improve your writing. Tell me your ideas.
___You're ready to move beyond the sandwich format essay. Next time out, let the material drive the organization. Knock your socks off!
___Forget if I'm happy--does this essay work for you?
___This essay redefines the boundaries and renders my puny checklist irrelevant.
___Comments on my comments? If so, tell me and let's discuss, okay?
___Not an order, but why not show this paper to_________________________? He/she might be interested or be able to learn something from your strengths.
___Could you read this aloud to the rest of the class (or let me) or let me so I can point out some of the good things in it?
I-search checklist*
Grade____/30
Late first draft: -2 =
Content /14
___This is a strong research topic
___You begin with strong questions
___You've laid out the background clearly and in detail
___Question really connects to you and your life
___You give clear reasons for writing and make the personal connection
___We find out how you found your answer.
___Answer laid out in detail
___We find out what you learned
___Your answer answers your question
___You tell us what difference the answer might make in the future, what you will do with it
___Research adequate
___Research goes beyond obvious
___Research emphasizes personal connection
___Overall, material is not just old-fashioned research
Organization /10
___Each section does what it's supposed to do
___Minimal overlap and repetition
___Sections subheaded, organized, not jumbled
___Answer organized by topic, not by when/where you found material
___Writinq doesn't ramble, get confusing, lose the point, become padded
___Search describes where information found and evaluates sources
__Abstract summarizes and is not an introduction
___You seem in control of your own material as shown by overall clearness, coherence , logic
Mechanics /2
problems major/minor
Layout
___title page ok /4
___table of contents ok
___abstract ok
___order of pages correct
___page numbering ok
___names of sections consistent and correct
___sections named
___margins ok
___double spaced
___citations ok
___list of sources Ok
___list of sources annotated
* The items on the checklist are not equally important and so one check or x does not necessarily equal another, which means that you can NOT add up checks or subtract x’s to figure the number I arrive at. I do the checklist and then determine a number based on all the elements I’m looking at.
Course assignments: ADA/EO BOILERPLATE:
NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATION
Eastern Maine Community College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age in its programs and activities. Inquiries about the College’s compliance with, and policies that prohibit discrimination on, these bases may be directed to: Affirmative Action Officer, President’s Office, Rangeley Hall, 354 Hogan Road, Bangor, Maine 04401, telephone number 974-4633, voice/TDD 974-4658, fax number 974-4888, nlundy@emcc.edu, http://www.emcc.edu;
United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 33 Arch Street, Suite 900, Boston, MA 02110, telephone 617-289-0111, TTY/TDD 617-289-0063, fax 617-289-0150, e-mail OCR.Boston@ed.gov internet http://.www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/index.html?src=oc;
Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC), 51 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333-0051, telephone 207-624-6050, TTY/TTD 207-624-6064, fax 207-624-6063, internet http://www.state.me.us/mhrc/index.
shtml: and/or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 475 Govern-ment Center, Boston, MA 02203, telephone 617-565-3200 or 1-800-669-4000, TTY 617-565-3204 or 1-800-669-6820, fax 617-565-3196, internet http://www.eeoc.gov/.
The College also does not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference or marital, parental, or veteran’s status. Inquiries about the College’s policies that prohibit discrimination on these bases may be directed to the Affirmative Action Officer or MHRC identified above.
Eastern Maine Community College is an equal opportunity institution and complies with the requirements of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 (34 CFR Part 106), Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (34 CFR Part 104), and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and its implementing regulations. Discrimination on the basis of race; color; national origin; gender; sexual orientation, marital, parental or military status or disability in the recruitment and admission of its students, in the administration of its educational policies and programs, and in the recruitment and employment of its instructional and non-instruction personnel is prohibited. Sexual harassment of either employees or students is a violation of state and federal laws. It is the policy of Eastern Maine Community College that no member of the College community may sexually harass another. Inquiries concerning Title IX, Title VI and ADA may be made to Affirmative Action Officer, at Eastern Maine Community College, 354 Hogan Road, Bangor, Maine 04401, (207) 974-4633; inquiries regarding Disability Services may be made to the Section 504 Coordinator at the same address, (207) 974-4658 (voice/TDD). Questions, concerns, complaints and/or grievances about discrimination in any areas of the college should be directed to Eastern Maine Community College’s Affirmative Action Officer; or to the Maine Human Rights Commission, State House Station 51, Augusta, Maine, 04333-0051, (207) 624-6050 or the Office of Civil Rights, J.W. McCormack, POCH, Room 707, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, 1-617-223-9662.
MORE LEGAL BOILERPLATE, Aug. 6, 2013:
**EMCC is committed to providing an equal opportunity for students and complies with all state and federal equal opportunity laws. Students with documented disabilities will be accommodated in accordance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1991. If you have a hidden disability, you must disclose the disability and provide documentation to the Accommodation Evaluator, Room 312 Katahdin Hall, or call 974-4658 before any accommodations can be made.
Week 16
12/9
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Return 5 graf essays
| * Final draft i-search due, not 12/11--lateness penalty |
12/11
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search debriefing
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* make-ups for missed inclass essays (only one make-up allowed)
* reaction to your own own essays and grafs due, graf 20
* Optional: Course evaluation, writing evaluation graf # 21 (substitutes for any one earlier missed graf)
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12/12-12/13
| Final exam period, exam times to be announced |
Happy days!
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Time has no meaning!
| Fun fun fun! |
Vacation!
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No more pencils no more books no more teachers' dirty looks!
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Merry Xmas! Cut a tree, hang a stocking, get a kiss under the mistletoe, break out those Xmas recipes!
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Winter's on its way!
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New Year's Eve! Countdown! Make a resolution!
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Love, romance, adventure, excitement! Stay safe!
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posted by johngoldfine | 8:50 AM
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